The background noise of our personal and inevitable doom. It is like the background of our lives, always pulling on our subconscious, reminding us that we cannot escape from it. We cannot live forever. Unless, of course, you hope that Ray Kurzweil is correct and that sometime in the next 40 to 50 years, the surviving humans will inevitably be able to live, with the help of a variety of pills designed for specific tasks, that we they will reshape genetically to thwart aging and defend themselves. disease and disorder in our bodies.
It’s called “The Singularity.” A proposed time, in the not too distant future, in which artificial intelligence will overtake human. The Singularity is based on and exponentially increasing growth in technology and medicine, expanding the field of Moore’s Law, which refers to the exponential increase in computer technology.
By then, or perhaps because of then, nanotechnology will have developed to the point where armies of microscopic robots will clean our arteries and patrol our inner workings for viral and bacterial evildoers. Our personal soldiers will not take prisoners and will show no mercy. I welcome you. My own backup arsenal to support my natural immune system? Go ahead!
Our immune system, amazing as it is and naturally evolved, identifies and reacts to a threat, then remembers that threat for future reference. But the process is a crash course. The immune system has no real “warning” except for vaccines, a wonderful scientific advance that has been shown to be immensely beneficial to humanity and is sadly now often avoided because ignorant parents listen to people like Jenny McCarthy. .
Ignorance can endanger us all, but imagine what could be possible with such scientific advances. Our immune system could have a backup militia to help fight disease. We could be healthier. But that’s not all, we would have new drugs at our disposal to literally stop aging or reverse it. Scientists at Harvard Medical School have already successfully reversed aging in laboratory mice. Our physical health could be controlled and, in that future world, many of us could inevitably thwart death. Of course, getting hit by a car is another story.
But for now here we are, each of us, to quote Neil Peart from Rush, “a cell of conscience,” living our lives with the awareness that one day, in our future, we will stop living. That’s a difficult thing to consider, and many of us do a great job of not considering it at all. But I think we rob ourselves by not thinking about our own death.
Singularity aside, we all look down the barrel of the same weapon. And, not that it has the same potential as The Singularity, let’s put aside the notion of an afterlife as well. This world is the only one we will know, and our individual life is the only one we will experience. Doesn’t it make it so much more valuable to know that life is not forever? Everything we see and hear, all the people we love, are increasingly valuable because our experience with them is limited. For now …
